In putting together this directory of companies in the peer-to-peer
space, the editors at the O'Reilly Network spent some time debating
whether many of them were truly peer-to-peer. Having ridden the Internet
buzzword train for many years, we've watched as companies spin to
re-label themselves: Netcos became Push companies, became B2B companies,
became Open Source companies, and now, many are redefining themselves as
peer-to-peer companies.

In some cases, the new label is valid: the company or project's
efforts shift focus, or they merely see their efforts in a new light as
broader paradigms are revealed. But we spent some time weighing these
and discussing whether they should be included in a peer-to-peer
directory.

For example, many of these companies are actually developing
distributed computing applications, where a central organization takes
advantage of the available cycles on thousands of PCs (nodes, if you
will), and aggregates the data. By almost any definition, this can
hardly be defined as peer-to-peer, since the peers cannot communicate
with one another, but only with a central point. Sounds more like
client-server.

And yet, the technical issues that these distributed computing
projects face are similar to those faced by peer-to-peer projects. Both
are faced with developing systems that coordinate the activities (or
data) on thousands of external nodes. Also, both types of systems raise
the once anonymous PC to the level of contributor to a larger effort,
whether they are contributing a file (in the case of a file-sharing
service like Freenet) or cycles (in the case of a distributed computing
effort such as SETI@Home).

Tim O'Reilly, who got dragged into this discussion when he walked
past my desk, says he sees at least three types of projects working in
this peer-to-peer space:

Instant messaging apps, and in these he includes not only true
IM projects like Jabber, but some file sharing services: "Napster is
really just instant messaging where the question isn't 'Are you there?'
but 'Do you have this file?'"

Workgroups, where individuals can collaborate over the Net on a
joint project, and

Distributed computing.

As you can easily see, any of these types of applications could (and
often do) work with a central server. But the field is just emerging to
prominence and as the technology behind the less centralized efforts
(like Freenet) develops, we may find that even the centralized services,
become more truly peer-to-peer.

With that, here's our Peer-to-Peer Directory. If you have thoughts
about whether these companies belong, or you know of other efforts that
should be included, visit our
Forum
and tell us about it.

Richard Koman's WeblogSupreme Court Decides Unanimously Against Grokster
Updating as we go. Supremes have ruled 9-0 in favor of the studios in MGM v Grokster. But does the decision have wider import? Is it a death knell for tech? It's starting to look like the answer is no.
(Jun 27, 2005)